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Striped Family Grows: Cubs Appeared in the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve

24 January 2020

Фото с сайта wikipedia.org. Автор: Davepape

Two new broods of Amur tigers appeared in the Sikhote-Alin Nature Reserve. Photo traps installed in the specially protected area captured cubs. The reserve’s specialists determined that the cubs that got into the camera’s lenses are already quite old: they are about eight months old. However, striped predators were not observed on camera traps previously.

Sikhote-Alin State Nature Biosphere Reserve named after K.G. Abramov is located in the Primorsky Territory, in the eastern and central parts of the Sikhote-Alin ridge. The area of ​​the natural reserve is more than 4 thousand square kilometers. In 2001, it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Today, the Sikhote-Alin Reserve is the most convenient place to observe the Amur tiger. 15 individuals of a striped predator live on its territory. In addition to the Amur tigers, in the reserve you can find Himalayan bears, Amur gorillas, sika deer, scaly-sided merganser, tangerines, white-tailed and steller sea eagles and other, including rare, animals.

Devices captured five new cubs. Two of them are the cubs of the tigress Mira. This is the third offspring of a wild cat. Also, another mother is a predator, which has not yet received a name. The nameless tigress became the mother of three cubs. The shots from the camera trap show how young predators playfully walk around the reserve, as if bypassing their possessions - they probably already guess who the real owners of these places are.

According to experts, the cubs are about eight months old, however, they got into the lenses of the camera traps just now. According to experts, this is the result of maternal caution. In the first months of cubs' life, the female keeps them away from the main trails where camera traps are installed. Tigresses are not afraid of cameras at all: with high probability it is in these places that cubs can meet large predators that can pose a threat to them. Now the cubs have grown up and are ready for walks with their mothers. The video shows how young predators are actively interested in smells on marking trees

At the same time, experts say that feeding two, and even three cubs in winter is not an easy task for the female. However, tigresses cope with this task excellently: all cubs are in perfect physical shape and very well-fed. This suggests that tigers in the reserve have no problems with food.

The Amur tiger is one of the largest land predators on our planet, the largest subspecies of the tiger in the world. The weight of an adult male is about 185 kg, the body length is 220 cm. About 520 individuals of the Amur tiger are recorded in the world. 95% of the entire population lives in the Russian Far East and 5% in China and North Korea. In 1947, the Amur tiger was taken under protection - in the USSR, hunting for it was completely prohibited. Since 2010, the Russian Geographical Society has been supporting the Amur Tiger project.